Book Reviews

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

Anthology #38

Butterfly Brain, by Barry Cryer

For those of us in Britain of ‘a certain age’, Barry Cryer is one of the greats of mid-twentieth, and early twenty-first century entertainment. He was occasionally a performer and, indeed, that’s how he started out, but his forte was in writing, and his comedy scripts for a multitude of performers are virtually legendary. So, as one might expect, this third volume of memoirs of his career is full of anecdotes about the names, both famous and not so famous with whom he worked. I was looking forward to reading it as an enjoyable interlude from the vicissitudes of life, and his persona was one of light-hearted devotion to his craft; the only jarring moment came when I realised that it was written and published while the now exposed & discredited Jimmy Savile was still alive, so Cryer’s reminiscence of the former, in addition to a favourable mention of his Leeds accent [Cryer was born there] is praise for his ‘charity’ work, which we now know was a cover for his crimes: more evidence of how plausible Savile could present himself as, unfortunately. Should a later edition of the book, if such came into being, be updated to excise this unfortunate section? I’m not sure, but this is the only minor downside of an otherwise very enjoyable book, in which the humour is incessant, and clever, even if one isn’t familiar with all the names he shamelessly drops: he did work with them, after all, so no reason at all why they shouldn’t get a mention. It’s also very gratifying that he had a very settled & happy home life, with none of the celebrity mishaps & hangups. The paperback I read was published in 2010 by Orion Books Ltd., [2009, Weidenfeld & Nicolson], London, ISBN 978-1-4091-1994-4.

The Berlin Exchange, by Joseph Kanon

For most of this story, the reader; if I can be permitted to make that generalisation; is left unsure as to the protagonist’s motivation, and what his intended course of action is going to be; it’s even possible that he doesn’t know at the outset, but we learn quite quickly that his recent experience as an agent for the Russians, while working on the postwar atomic & hydrogen bomb project in the USA has given him the confidence to be able to react to a changing situation. He has ended up in East Germany in 1963, after spending 5 years in Wakefield Prison, England; the reason for this is that he has an ex-wife and 11-year old son in the DDR, and he was considered useful enough to be exchanged for British agents. He also still has an American passport, and this an element which features in the narrative as a possible facilitator for an escape, if that is what he really wants. Mitigating against that are three factors: his ex-wife is dying; his son is the nation’s darling, as the lead actor in a local television soap opera; and he knows that he can’t afford to trust the boy’s stepfather, who facilitated the agent exchange, and is involved with a surreptitious [and very likely illegal] exchange programme of failed escapees [Republikflüchtlinge] into West Germany, for hard currency — although this is disguised as much-needed material resources for the deprived citizens of the much-vaunted ‘model state’. Also, the Russians don’t want to relinquish his services: could the Americans be of any help here? Some of the dialogue is a bit choppy and difficult to follow, but it is conversational, so it rings true. The reader is kept guessing until the very end, but it is a well worked out plot, so persistence is rewarded. The paperback I read was published in 2022 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd., London [2022, Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc., USA], ISBN 978-1-3985-0151-5.

Beyond Time, edited by Mike Ashley

This is a compendium in which “classic tales of trips to the past and their consequences run alongside rare experimental and mind-bending pieces, with paradoxes, philosophical dilemmas and every perplexing strand of time travel unravelled in between.” Mike Ashley is the author & editor of more than 100 books, and is a historian of popular fiction; his British Library Science Fiction Classics anthologies, of which this is one, include at least two others. This one has an introduction charting the chronology of the time travel narrative from the 1880s to the late 1950s; each story also has a short introduction giving background information on the author; not all of them give the date of the story though, which I found rather irritating, as context is always helpful. There is a mix of British and American stories but, despite having been published by the British Library, some of the British stories appear to have been edited to include American spelling; although that could have been done by the original authors, perhaps in the hope of increased sales. I have to confess I only found a few of these really enjoyable: some felt rather contrived, notwithstanding the suspension of disbelief required by the genre. Still, “different strokes for different folks”, to use a cliché, and other people might enjoy all of these, or some which I didn’t; suffice to say: if you enjoy stories involving time travel, or the manipulation of time, there should be at least a few in this compendium you will find rewarding. The paperback I read was published in 2019 [introduction and notes © 2019, Mike Ashley] by The British Library, London, ISBN 978-0-7123-5320-5.

Dead of Night, by Simon Scarrow

This is the second book in the series set in Berlin during the second world war, featuring Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke of the Kriminalpolizei, and the sequel I was hoping for to Blackout, which I reviewed here in November 2021; I will only give brief background details here, because there is plenty in the earlier review. It is now the end of January 1940, but for the inhabitants of Berlin, the war hasn’t really started for them yet, notwithstanding blackout regulations: the only real intrusion has been air-drops of propaganda leaflets by the enemy. However, after consolidating power in the lead-up to the war, the régime is not only pushing forward militarily, but also planning in the background developments of which it wants to keep the populace most definitely ignorant: in his prefatory note, Scarrow declares that “Writing about life in Germany during the Third Reich inevitably brings an author face to face with some of the darkest aspects of human nature.” These don’t reveal themselves until Schenke has started his investigation into the death of a Berlin doctor, as a favour to an old flame, Ruth, who has Jewish parentage; the death was initially written off & closed as a suicide, but his widow refuses to believe it, and the more Schenke investigates, which he is having to do surreptitiously, having been warned off the case, the more he is convinced that there is a cover-up in operation. What that is, he isn’t sure, but his loyal colleagues, Hauser and Liebwitz, are willing to risk helping him. When his investigations bring him to the attention of Reinhard Heydrich, he is painfully aware that one wrong move could result in death; he is also emotionally divided between Ruth, and his girlfriend Karin, who also happens to be Admiral Canaris’s niece. Despite being conscious of the unlikelihood of Schenke being killed so early in this series, I enjoyed this story, which was well plotted, keeping up the tension right until the end: I think there is plenty of potential for more stories here. The paperback I read was published in 2023 by HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP, London, ISBN 978-1-4722-5860-1.